For weeks, Oprah's people had reached out to the Senator for a live, prime time interview, much like her explosive evening with the Sussexes, where finally The Question would be put to Senator Graham, once and for all. Her Executive Producer, Angela, had thus been tasked with visiting the Senator's home to get his Thumb's Up or Down on the matter, and for the last hour she had found herself being taken on a whirlwind "tour" of his estate by a fast-walking, faster-talking woman on his staff. As Angela strained to keep up, her only thought was, Who IS this woman?
"You see," she said; in a high-pitched and honey-dewed voice, "the Senator is very careful, very...selective, you might say...in who he permits to have entrance to his beautiful home through the front door. And your Miss Winfrey is most decidedly NOT the kind he normally allows through anything but the servant's entrance. Now don't misunderstand me, please. The Senator is a broadminded man, and prejudice towards the minority race simply has no bearing on this a'tall. It's just that we have so many nosy neighbors and there's always so much...talk, and so many...ugly rumors have followed Lindsey, just about his whole life; even as a mere tadpole of a boy, whenever he'd try to express himself of a school night in Daddy Florence's bar, done up as a little ol' Cowboy; entertaining the men coming home from hard, hard days at the slaughterhouse. Oh, such hard men, livin'...hard lives. Oh, it was all he could think about some nights, I tell you. And even when he would invite some of these gentlemen to join him in the woods behind the gas station for one of his famous tea parties; just to give these men, accustomed as they were to the brutalities of life, a fleeting glimpse of...of the BEAUTY this world can offer up to them...why, you should have heard the horrible things everyone in that pissant lil town said about that poor boy. Every one of every race, every creed, every sex...
"And THAT!!" she stopped mid-stride, her voice rising alarmingly, suddenly, "THAT is a subject your Miss Winfrey will NOT be given license to pursue. Do you hear me, young woman? We gonna have us some GROUND rules on this interview, here. The Senator leads a private life when it comes to matters of the heart. Wasting valuable interview time on all the many women he has had his way with in every imaginable place and time and setting. Oh, but he has gotten so, so much pussy. How could they POSsibly say he...
"But as I said, you and your Miss Winfrey are NEVER to know about those whores. We will, however, permit a discussion of the Senator's present legislation to restore recently vandalized monuments of our glorious Confederacy. I wish I waaas in the land of cot..."
"I'm sorry," Angela interrupted, mid-song. "Wh-who are you again? Up until last week I had been dealing with Parker, one of Senator Graham's staffers."
"Oh, we let that twink go. I'm handling all media inquiries now. How do you do?" she said, brightly, with a toss of her long, auburn hair.
As Angela slowly walked toward this odd, chattering woman in a cherry-spot lace peignor, she could gradually make out the all too familiar features: the heavy-lidded eyes; the crooked, bullet-proof teeth; the lock of salt and pepper hair that had slipped from beneath the auburn wig.
"I am the Senator's sister, Linda. But all my friends, they call me Ladybug."
